What Competitive Intelligence Does Sales Want?

Sales (and companies in general) thrives on winning business. By putting an emphasis on winning, this implies that a sale is a competitive endeavor where there is often a winner and loser. And winning every contest is not an easy task. It takes skill, effort and an understanding of the game and its players.

Losing, on the other hand, is not very difficult at all. Every sales rep has a story about the time they didn’t prepare, research the opportunity, understand the competition or work hard enough to make the right value equation. The small amount of time that went into that opportunity was lost from the beginning. There was almost no chance of winning the business and the token efforts may have been less valuable than avoiding the situation altogether.

Sales professionals have spoken to us at Primary Intelligence, telling us exactly what they want at different stages of the sales cycle. The information is very enlightening. Most people would guess that “price” and “competitor’s price” would be on the list. They would be right. However, they’re not as high on the list as you might think.

When it comes to competitive intelligence, sales people want to know the following:

Before the sale

Which companies have needs I can fulfill?

What are the primary pain-points that I can use?

How will the competitors approach the same opportunity?

What advantages do I have over the competition?

What advantages do I have over the prospect’s in-house efforts?

Does this client have the ability to pay the price I’ll have to charge?

During the sale

Which competitors am I likely to see in this deal?

What are those competitors saying about their product/service/solution?

What are those competitors saying about my product/service/solution?

How do buyers make decisions (which people have to be involved?)

Which of my features is likely to be perceived as “must have” over the competition?

What price is the competition offering?

How can I be seen as the expert in this deal?

After the sale

What did I/we do to earn this business?

Where there any trouble spots that nearly cost us the business?

(If lost) Where did we fail to communicate value?

(If lost) Which competitor won and what terms did they use?

If I wanted to re-engage, what would it take to win back the business?

How can I win this type of deal in the future?

In the future, should I avoid this type of company in favor of others? (Is there something about this type of prospect that makes them less productive?)

Recommendation: Listen to the sales leaders and ground-level sales people and design your competitive intelligence program to accommodate their needs. You might find that your program changes away from scraping websites and reading 10-Ks to actively conducting 1st person research with your marketplace, either with Win Loss, Market Needs, Target Prospecting, Post-implementation and the like.

In other words, your traditional competitive intelligence program that is built to support corporate objectives may not match up at all with what the sales people are looking for. However, considering that sales is the lifeline of your business, it might be wise to give them a little love and help them win more business. In the end, this is part of what makes top companies great.

Now is the time for sales reps and managers to speak up and tell everyone what they want. If I have missed something, please post a comment in this blog, send me an email (cdalley@primary-intel.com) or call me (801-838-9600 x5050)